


Maybe The Wind Will Blow The Right Way For Once

by auroreanrave



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, European Excursion, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magic, Possession, Protectiveness, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1352602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Season 3, Stiles is gone, and Derek goes on a rescue job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe The Wind Will Blow The Right Way For Once

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a canon-divergent end for what I believe will be the end of Teen Wolf's third season.

It's on a Wednesday that Stiles disappears.

Correction: it's on a Wednesday that Stiles is _taken_ from them.

(The _nogitsune_ is channelling through the Nemeton and Lydia has mountain ash in her fingers and Kira has her electric powers at full charge and Derek is just running trying to find a way through the smoke and darkness and fire and blood.

They're fighting to save Stiles, fighting to save the town, fighting to save the world from an evil that will tear humanity apart in its fingers. Derek is more concerned about one of these things and it's making him dig blood gouges into his palms as he fights the _oni_ , ducking Allison's bow and blade.

But then Stiles is roaring, his arms aflame with energy and light is pouring from him and the _nogitsune_ is screaming, spikes of shadowy energy punch their way through the forest, spikes as tall as houses bursting free.

"Derek." He looks up, and sees Stiles, ablaze with light in the circle of mountain ash, knees pressed into the trunk of the nemeton, blood in his mouth and gripping onto his doppelganger. He snaps his forearms together; the nogitsune screams and curses.

"Stiles..." Derek is stumbling towards, blood lost in the fight, but he's still on his feet.

"Derek. I'm sor - "

And then in a blaze of unholy, blessed light, the circle snaps and explodes, becoming a focal point, a corona of light that blazes a hole into the night sky until it fades.

The survivors are picking themselves up from the forest floor; Kira and Scott are clinging to one another, Allison and Isaac the same. Lydia is already at her feet, tears pouring down her pale face.

Stiles is vaporised. Wiped out. _Gone_.)

The days after are dark, darker than when the _nogitsune_ was around; the Sheriff collapses and won't talk, Melissa won't stop crying, Scott disappears himself. Derek ends up with Isaac and Kira, going through research with a vehement Lydia who spends forty eight hours straight researching spells and incantations before collapsing herself with exhaustion.

The fourth day after Stiles is gone, Scott comes to the loft. His eyes are red-rimmed and he looks utterly drained and alone.

"I'm gonna go looking for him. I just... I can't believe he's gone."

Derek swallows a lump in his throat. "You know the odds. Whatever the ritual did -"

"I do. But I have to. I can - shit, I can _feel_ him, and it's not... not grief. I think he's still out there."

"Then let me look for him." Derek's words pour out of his mouth quicker than he can catch them, because he wants to find Stiles, desperately, achingly, with a hunger gnawing in his bones to find Stiles, but Scott is Stiles' best friend, his brother in all but blood, it's his duty.

Before Scott can interject, more flows from Derek's lips. "I have more experience tracking, I can actually leave the county whenever I want without picking up suspicion, and I have contacts all over the globe. I also have," he almost stutters, "less of an emotional attachment."

Scott lets him finish, scuffing his boots and looking at a spot through the window over Derek's shoulder, trying not to blink more tears into existence.

"Fine. But you bring him back here, and you stop pretending you don't have an emotional attachment." Scott is fierce and fiery and Derek briefly imagines him, draped in Kira's foxfire, his alpha eyes blazing crimson, and he can see the man Scott will become.

"Fine. I have a contact in San Francisco. A powerful medium. She can help us track him down. I'll go in the morning."

Derek waits until Scott goes, and packs his bag and his passport and leaves the keys through Scott's home mail slot at three in the morning before he drives, drives, drives out of the town that stinks of grief and loss.

* * *

Marina is in her forties, with one good eye and a right cross that could kill a giant. She jostles Derek into her shop, whacks him hard across the back for not calling more often, asks after Cora, and immediately recoils, her hand to her nose.

" _Jesus_ , Hale, what is wrong with you? That stink it just... radiates off you, my God. I'm surprised half the supernatural population in San Fran didn't crash their cars trying to avoid you."

Derek sniffs the air - he can smell his own sweat, and aftertastes of the meat of his lunch-dinner last night, but nothing unusual. Marina is the strongest psychic Derek's ever come across, and can easily detect something on Derek that he cannot. He's considered sending Lydia to her for training, although he suspects Lydia would spend most of the trip critiquing Marina's purple and white hair streaks.

"You just smell of... oh Lord, it's like rotting and disease and death and just... bad mojo, Hale."

"I'm looking for something."

"Someone, more like." Marina admonishes, taking her seat behind the counter, positioning her lumbar cushion so it supports her frame. "That's clear enough, Derek."

Derek nods, conceding. "He's a... a member of my pack. Not _my_ pack, but - "

Marina waves him off. "I understand it fine from your stink. He means an awful lot to you."

"You can get that from my scent?"

"From the fact you've travelled all the way here on a hunch that I can help you somehow." Marina nods, her hand extending. "You know I need something of his."

Derek removes the shirt from his bulky backpack, preserved in a forensics plastic bag stolen from the police station courtesy of the Sheriff. Red and white check, one of Stiles' favourites.

Marina unwraps the bag, sliding the shirt free, and a wave of Stiles' scent hits Derek's nostrils, all warm and spicy and earthy and Derek is caught between roaring and yelling, but manages to just glower at a collection of Tarot cards over Marina's shoulder.

Her hands are heavy on the fabric and Marina cocks her head to the side, as if hearing something off in the distance. The shop is silent, unnervingly so.

"Do you want the good news or the bad?" She manages, eventually.

"Tell me."

"Your boy's alive, _kimosabe_ ," Marina says, soft and low, and Derek's heart leaps into his chest, "but he's in some serious _trouble_."

* * *

The plane to Bulgaria is long and restless. Derek's wolf coils uncomfortable in his chest, aching for escape and to run, as long and as hard and as wild as it can, to find Stiles. Derek takes a glass of whiskey, even though it has no effect on him, and tries to sleep as much as he can.

Marina's texts keep him updated as he touches down in Sofia and makes his way into the city - thoughts, feelings, intuitions about Stiles. He's scared, tired, weak, stuck somewhere, and soon Derek narrows it down to the building.

It's an old warehouse, registered, according to Marina's hacker friend Artemis, to a eighty-three year old local woman, whose son, Andrey, has ties to local crime beats and supernatural syndicates in Eastern Europe. Witches-for-hire in Prague, vampiric assassins in Paris, a group of shapeshifting thieves in Copenhagen. Bigger than Derek and his one-man army can take.

Or at least that's what Marina tries to reason Derek with, about thirty seconds before he busts the door down, swiping the head clean off the first humanoid to come close.

The next few fall in a blur - Derek slashes one throat, kicks another through a window, punches a third and knocks their head against a desk - and it's once he makes his way past the office, he gets a sudden sharp hit of Stiles' scent down a corridor.

He finds a pile of rags in the corner of a room, light spilling from the open door, and the pile of rags moves under the light, to reveal a person under there, pale skin waxy from lack of sunlight, eyes glassy and tired and bruises mottled on his arms and legs.

"Stiles."

The head lifts and there's recognition in the eyes and Stiles shuffles forward, half on his knees and half on all fours. "Derek?"

"Do not touch the product." Derek turns, to find Andrey levelling a gun at him, snarling and angry and Stiles shrinks away from him, from both of them, retreating them back into the shadows.

"What the hell have you done to him?"

"He is... very unique. He carries with him a shadow. A darkness." Andrey sniffs the air dramatically, grinning. "The _nogitsune_ leaves imprints on all those who it touches. Your... friend is soaked in it. We have been allowing some of our clients the chance to sample it." Andrey's hand moves as if to run it through Stiles' hair, as if he's done it a thousand times, and a proprietary, possessive rage rushes through Derek.

Derek is caught between boiling, roiling fury, and a strange relief that someone has been siphoning off Stiles' darkness, the pain that pressures down on his heart, the burden the _nogitsune_ has left with their brave human boy. The wolf is snarling, desperate to grab Stiles and take him away, far away, but the gun reeks of silver and Derek is willing to wager that it's full of bullets of the same.

"Let us go now, and I won't rip you to shreds."

"You think you can get to me before I drop a slug of silver into your belly?" Andrey is smirking, his hair slicked back with sweat, and his eyes are glowing a sinister gray.

"Derek..." Stiles moans out from behind him, "just go, alright? I'm not worth it. Not after everything."

Derek turns in surprise. Stiles is resolute and that's when Derek's mind clears enough to realise there's both another smell in the room and something inside Stiles, a lump in his collarbone that's too prominent and misshapen to be natural. Stiles shuffles weakly over to his nest of torn bedsheets, his misery and pain and guilt radiating off him in -

_Oh. That's it._

"You're trapping him inside his mind, aren't you?" Derek says, and Andrey's smile drops, becoming stony and it all flits together, combining until everything slides together like a jigsaw puzzle. Derek goes to Stiles' side, kneeling down, and the scent of something artificial finally registers in his mind.

"You're using some kind of charm, probably from one of your witches, no doubt, that ensures that the after effects of the nogitsune keeps cycling through his mind. You can't keep on selling his misery and pain if it all dries up, so you create a new supply from his memories, keeping him docile and trapped." Derek pushes Stiles' neck to one side, baring a column of bare flesh to him. "Stiles, this is going to hurt."

Derek presses in with his claws, pushing through skin and muscle to find the charm - tiny, metal, shaped like a spiked teardrop - and pulls it out, Stiles' hiccuping, weak cries of pain sounding out. It is killing Derek to do this, but he crushes the charm in his other hand as soon as it's out of Stiles' body, before placing his palm on Stiles' wound and draining away some of the pain.

"Get away from him!" Andrey is yelling, desperation and relisation clouding his voice, and the threat of a silver bullet looks more than likely, but Derek doesn't care because Stiles gasps and raises his head and there's a _spark_ in his eyes that's worth the world many times over.

Derek rises, because that smell is gone and Stiles has stopped being a beacon of misery and pain and disappointment and guilt, strength flowing into his bones and mind alike. Stiles isn't afraid anymore, and neither is Derek.

Andrey gets off a shocked warning, before Derek launches, one hand smacking away the gun, the other slamming claws-first into Andrey's face.

* * *

Scott nearly cries over the phone when he hears Stiles' voice, and Derek leaves Stiles alone in the hotel room in Lyon while he and Scott talk. He doesn't stray far, just heads to the lobby to read a magazine in his poor French and orders room service for himself and Stiles.

"After the... ritual, I woke up in Sofia." Stiles tells him later that evening, when they've had their share of steak and potatoes and beer and Stiles is looking a million times better for sleep and a hot shower and food, Derek keeping watch nearby for most things.

"The, uh, ritual basically stripped the nogitsune clear, but - but it meant I was knocked out and transported somewhere. I could have ended up in the Atlantic or in the Outback. I'm lucky it was on dry land and in a city.

"I tried to call you guys, but by the time I found a phone, someone had reported me to Andrey. About ten minutes later, they grabbed me out of a pharmacy and then... you can guess." Stiles is still restless, but it's his usual brand of nervous energy; hands expressing in the air, fingers tugging at his new clothes, the duvet, everything within reach.

"Thank you for coming for me." Stiles says, his eyes full of tears, and he wraps his arms around Derek, and it takes every inch of willpower Derek possesses and several more, not to nuzzle into Stiles' neck and tell him everything, everything in the world Derek wants him to know.

* * *

The next few weeks are a blur - Stiles returns home and after several days of having visitors and readjusting to life, everything begins to settle down again. Derek spends his days making sure Peter doesn't burn the loft down or do anything that attracts suspicion.

One evening when Peter is out with Malia at the movies, there's a knock at the loft door and Stiles pushes it open himself. Derek is cleaning up, elbows deep in soapy suds.

"Hi."

Derek's heart leaps into his throat. "Hey. How are you doing?"

"Good. I mean, I still have the bad dreams, but... I'm getting better. I feel better."

"Good, I'm glad." Derek finishes cleaning a glass, turns to Stiles.

"So... your friend Marina got in touch. Checking in how I was. She's nice. She also... wanted me to know about your little road trip to rescue me. About how much I meant to you."

Derek opens his mouth to try and object, to say that he had to fight Scott for it, to hold back that he had to push back every animalistic impulse to find him and claim him, but Stiles' lips are on his before he can open his mouth, and then Stiles is pushing him against the sink.

They're kissing, hands and waists getting wet with soapy dishwater and it's the least romantic setting Derek can imagine inside his apartment, but it's Stiles and Derek has to show a little restraint to stop himself going wild and tearing Stiles' clothes off right here in the kitchenette.

"It's okay, this is totally informed consent, dude, and before you start getting all anxious and worried, I wanna do this, I have done for a while, you do too, so... just let go, Derek." Stiles' words are whispers of warm breath against Derek's mouth and Derek feels the tension just slide off him. "Come on, Hale."

Stiles pulls him towards the bedroom, freeing Derek of his wet jeans along the way and Derek lets go.

* * *

In the middle of the next morning, with his legs wrapped around Derek's waist and light spilling over their shoulders, Stiles kisses Derek and smiles and whispers; Derek takes him back to his bed to contain their beating hearts.


End file.
